Join established Hollywood and international film and television industry professionals to learn about the four major stages of a film’s lifecycle: from writing the script, to producing and packaging it, directing, releasing and marketing. Hosted by Entertainment Executive and FMS alum Paul Davidson, and Director-Producer-Writer and former FMS Professor, Fatimah Tobing Rony, this series is open to UCI students, faculty, and staff.
Join us for the second event in this series where we discuss Screenwriting with Zach Stentz (Thor, X-Men: First Class, Agent Cody Banks)
UCI students who register and participate in all five events will be eligible for a special alumni gift and will receive a certificate for completing the workshop, “From Script to Screen.”
About Zach Stentz:
Zach Stentz is a writer and producer of film and television and novelist. He has written or co-written the films X-Men: First Class, Thor, Agent Cody Banks, and Rim of the World. Stentz is currently working on several feature projects for Netflix, Story Kitchen, and other producers. On the television side, Stentz has written and produced over a hundred hours of television, including The Flash, Fringe, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and several other shows. More recently, Stentz created the hit animated show Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous for Dreamworks, Universal, and Netflix.
About Paul Davidson:
Paul Davidson (1995) is an Entertainment executive who has over twenty years working in Film and TV development, production, acquisition, distribution and marketing. Most recently, Davidson led IDW Entertainment’s TV & Film division, producing series like Netflix’s Locke & Key, Apple TV+’s Surfside Girls and CBC’s Essex County. Prior to that, Davidson ran The Orchard’s film and TV division, growing the company into a robust independent film distribution studio. Under his leadership, The Orchard netted multiple Oscar nominations (Life, Animated and Cartel Land) and released well-known favorites like What We Do in the Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, American Animals, The Overnight and more. Prior to The Orchard, Paul ran Microsoft’s global digital entertainment service — Xbox Video. Paul is also the author of four books, including Company of Foos (2023), The Small Stuff (2022), Consumer Joe and The Lost Blogs.
About Fatimah Tobing Rony:
Fatimah Tobing Rony was a Professor of Film and Media Studies at UC Irvine for 26 years. She left teaching in June of 2024, to focus on producing, directing, and writing her feature animation film La Javanaise (in English: Ananda) in France with the producer Sébastien Onomo of Special Touch Studios and the producer Nia Dinata of Indonesia. Fatimah is the producer, director, and writer of the award-winning short film Annah la Javanaise (2020), an Official Selection of the Annecy Film Festival in June of 2020, and winner of fifteen international film awards including Best Short Film at the 2021 Anifilm Festival (Liberec, Czech Republic) and the 2021 Pixelatl Festival of Animation (Cuernavaca, Mexico). She received her Master of Fine Arts in Film (Directing/Production) from UCLA and her PhD in the History of Art from Yale University. She has directed and written several films, including the short On Cannibalism and the feature film Perempuan Punya Cerita (Chants of Lotus), which she co-directed with Nia Dinata, Upi, and Lasya Susatyo, and which was produced by Nia Dinata. She is the author of two books: The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle and How Do We Look ? Resisting Visual Biopolitics. The latter book tells the story of Annah la Javanaise, upon which her current film project is based.